


Gone

by BeecheyIsland



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: (there are mentions of crozier but not enough to warrant a character tag), Emotional, Hurt, Whump, and descriptions!!, anyways this is a whump fic and i had a lot of fun writing it, i am so creative with names, semi-colon galore, sounds sadistic and it is sadistic, this is legit just a fic about jop and no one else, thomas jopson deserved better and y'all can QUOTE! ME! ON! THAT!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:07:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26140843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeecheyIsland/pseuds/BeecheyIsland
Summary: The only man who survived, left alone.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 7





	Gone

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to my whump buddy Em for beta-ing this fic!!! let us revel in the hurt together!!  
> PLEASE give her a follow and her terror big bang fic, INK, a read [here](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whataterrorificmess)!!!
> 
> anyways, Jopson deserves better and was the best character in the show. here's a fic where i don't say ANY of that and instead make him hurt even more!! :)

_“They are gone.”_

Hands grip the wooden railing of the stairs in his home; he imagines his mother’s voice, slurred and deep in its inebriation, taunting him again. And again. And again.

What is he supposed to say to her? Can he even deny it? Like he’s been denying it for the past two years?

She doesn’t stop speaking, icy eyes challenging him from below.

_“And you abandoned them.”_

The words cut deep. Deeper than they should. He longs to once again feel the biting cold, the chill of the ice settling deep down in his bones, to view the featureless grey sky and white wasteland. What sort of man is he, to wish for the place that nearly swallowed him whole?

Not only his body. Everything. It took his life and shredded it, tossed it down its gaping maw to be taken into darkness.

His body was first, broken down to the barest skin and bones. He fought each day as if naked as a babe, defenceless yet armed with the bare instinct of survival. Next, his mind. All that reminded him of home was soon cast in doubt and fear, an illusion as he struggled to recall the life he left behind, immediately snatched away by the vast tundra. Last, his heart. It bled red with love, with joy, with gratitude. After being within the ice’s clutches, however…

He sometimes wonders if it now bleeds at all.

Where did he go? The man so eager to show his support for Her Majesty and his captains? Wasn’t he somewhere within his body, perhaps buried deep down, yet still present in the depths of his soul?

_“That boy disappeared the moment he set foot on that ship.”_

He doesn’t want to acknowledge her. She is a figment, that is all. Conjured up by his fragmented mind to give voice to the doubts that plague him relentlessly. All he needs to do is move down, one step at a time, and brush her from his vision like smoke. He knows the action will be futile, but it is the only way he can keep himself together. Because if he gives in… if he lets those thoughts obscure the facts… he may as well have died with his captain, to be forever frozen in his shame.

_Captain_. Aboard that ship, tending to his needs, it kept him sane. Now he can never again commit himself to those actions he once executed upon him, lest he again see the torn face below surrounded by a halo of white slowly bleeding red.

He can’t even hear that accent without remembering his captain. A steward’s job is to tend to his captain’s every need, yes?

Yes, it is.

So why didn’t he save him? Why didn’t he at least _try_? He needed to be saved. Yet he did nothing, just sat with hands gripping the dull blond hair, losing hope as tears blurred his vision.

It is the thing he regrets most. He left his captain to die. It is his fault.

_“Yes, it is.”_

Two years. Where is his body now? What has happened to it? Will his bloodied face be forever encased in the ice? The face he remembers seeing below him was so far from the proud, noble gaze of the captain he knew. If he is trapped in the ice, body to be frozen for eternity, let it not be a body torn apart. Let him be the captain the public adored, the admiralty scorned.

The ghost at the bottom of the stairs is gone, now. In its place is the ice. It regards him with an impassive stare; he cannot make out its form. It is the same height as he, but it ripples at the edges, like water. He wants to wrap his hands around its neck. Squeeze, until it knows his anger. Until it realises its mistake. Taking away all he loves, everyone he holds dear to his heart.

Yet it remains unmoving - the wasteland will not relent and will march ever-forward, to always turn a blind eye to his struggles and grief. He will never succeed in convincing it to still its movements and to face him. Even though he is now level with it on the floor of his home, he can see the landscape breathing with change as the ice ebbs and flows. Swallowing the events that occurred those fateful years within its murderous constraints. 

All he can see is the ice, now; the cold blue sky and weak sun bears down on him from above as he stumbles from the massacre, dying men's shouts clanging harshly against his ears with each crunch of his feet. 

If there was moisture left in his body, he would be crying, the salty tears running rivulets through the grime and dirt that has since coated his skin in its gritty film. To turn back now and to set his gaze upon those who have betrayed the very brothers they chose to stand with is futile. He must continue to run, to force his feet onwards along hardened rocks, to obey his captain’s wishes.

Time passes; he is not sure of the amount. All he knows is the sun is close to the horizon, causing tiny rises in the barren landscape to shift into long, claw-like shadows that reach for him. The ice wants to ensnare him in its grasp, to never let him escape and speak the truth of what has occurred within its vastness. It wants him silenced, it wants him dead. 

It wants him gone. 

The creaking of the wooden floorboards of his warm home under his feet remind him of the swaying and groaning he felt long ago. He shivers at the thought, eyes seeing another world; hands reach out and grasp at memories long passed; they slip through his shaking hands like water, knuckles white as they scrabble at the door frame.

Flames crackle in the hearth; he smells the smoke once again, the screams of the men as they perish beneath choking, blistering heat, the cracking of wood burning from the outside in.

The poison begins to seep through his body; he stumbles across hard stones, feeling the weight of the boat behind him, grunts escaping his throat in wheezes. The rope burns at his skin, searing his palms and coating the fragile organ with precious liquid metal. He cannot carry on like this. He cannot continue to march forward; he is weak, too weak to stand. Every bone in his body screams with pain as his eyes raise themselves to the deep azure heavens.

He falls, hand catching on the mantle. His face is close to the fire now, but he cannot feel the heat.

The other hand reaches to needle the thread, to sew the black button into navy-blue fabric. Teeth grit in concentration; he is on his knees, staring at the exposed stone of the hearth. But he can see the outstretched arm, hear huffs of amusement, feel the warmth of the man who gave him purpose in life.

Now, as his arms fall limp and his back sags, he feels the stones once again; this time, his voice is hoarse as he screams for the men, clawing along the shifting ground, reaching for safety. One turns to see him, a black figure against the white sun. They come back for him. They help him, breathe energy into his lungs and thin muscles. They help him walk again, with silent nods of companionship and dulled eyes.

They need to find the captain. It is the one thought that gives them all purpose.

He needs to be stable again. To see the sunshine as yellow instead of white.

Down his scuffed face he feels tears. Distantly, he can hear choking sobs tear his throat as he lets the emotions overflow once again.

Many nights have been spent this way: alone, with nothing but his crushing shame bludgeoning him with its severity.

He can hear the monster’s screams, the men’s cries, as limbs are ripped asunder. Blood splatters, steaming, against his face and across the rocks. He stands by his captain, only looking to him to ignore the vision in his peripherals.

Men lose their individuality and become slabs of meat, reduced to poisoned bone and sinew, as they thump to the ground. He cannot bear to see his fellow mates become lifeless husks before the monster, and before his captain, who forces his heaving down and his face to remain calm.

He can hear faint words ringing in his ears.

Whose words are they? Why are they so faint?  
  


_Run. Run away, get somewhere safe. Survive. Tell them not to follow us._

_We are gone. We are gone._

He cannot run, but the words come from a force he cannot disobey. His mind screams to stop, to turn, to fight; his body propels him from the screams of the dying.

He hears something - a blood-curdling scream that sends his heart stuttering, and the pained roar of the monster.

He can see the face, now. He grips the hair, he shakes the shoulders. Tears fall freely in his home, yet they do not fall at all in the wasteland.

Silence. Nothing but oppressive silence is around him. The very air stands still, the only sounds punctuating the deafening quiet his heaving, rasping sobs. His hand comes to his mouth; he bites, so hard now he breaks the skin and tastes metal that is hot, the tang and smell surrounding him with its musk.

Blood drips to the patterned rug. It soaks, spreading tendrils through the fabric. He can feel the holes in his side tearing open again, the hot liquid spreading and burning across his skin.

How did he survive?

He can’t remember.

All he knows is the warmth of fur cloaks against him. Vile liquid travelling down his throat, fish meat falling to his empty stomach. The colours are a haze of blacks, oranges, blues and yellows. He hears unfamiliar voices and feels unfamiliar hands upon his skin.

Where is he?

Someone came to him, then: a man with longer hair, a scruffy beard and a concerned expression. His lips moved soundlessly, but all he could do in reply was offer delirious groans of pain, slurred gasps the only sounds forcing their way past his cracked lips.

_gone,_

_they are gone._

_the monster-_

Someone came to him again, a kind voice and gentle hands ensuring swift recovery. Compression cloths, damp, against his forehead. Stitches in his side, holding together the pain and his thin grasp on reality.

He lays on his side, head on cold floorboards. He is curled in a foetal position, a rock against the screams of the world surrounding him.

So many questions. They want so much from him. They plague him, whisper in his ear late at night. They ask, and they will never stop asking. He will never be able to answer them, words in their language not varied to express the sheer terror of it all.

He wishes he were dead. He might find peace, then.

They try to help, but they never can; they try to offer their condolences and support, but they never stay long enough; they try to take him away from the memories, but the memories will always be with him until the day he dies.

He does not eat for days, to remember the times when his stomach gnawed in the wasteland. To feel even the faintest connection to what once was.

The ice gazes down at him as he shivers in the pool of his memories. It remains emotionless, outline continuing to shimmer faintly. The ghost of it will never leave him again, always taunting him like his mother.

His mother uses words to tear him apart.

The ice uses only silence.

And that is all it needs.

Because he knows, like the wounds from the creeping poison, that the gaping holes in his heart will never close. If the ice were gone, maybe they would seal shut, and he could live a life of ignorance.

But it stays, and it will not disappear. Everything he was, everything he did, his entire identity, is left in the ice, now. It taunts him, holding out his past in its palm. He turns his head to look up to it, eyes blurry.

It speaks to him, but the words fall on deaf ears. The mouth is a gaping pit of blackness, threatening to swallow him whole.

_Swallow me. Let me pass into the world above._

He extends a pitiful, stretched hand upwards, more sobs spilling past his throat, tears running across the bridge of his nose to patter to the floor.

A cruel laugh escapes the ice’s throat. It steps away and swallows itself up into nothingness, taking everything he was and everything he ever hoped to be with it. In its wake, it leaves nothing but a silence.

Silence, and blackness. The fire has died in the hearth. It is cold, now.

He is reminded of the chill he felt on the ship when he slept.

He rejected it before, seeing it as a menacing force that sought to claim him.

Now, resting his head upon the wooden floorboards, he welcomes it into his muscles, his bones, his heart.

It is now a part of him. For the cold is the only thing he can cherish. All physical sensations are void; the cold surrounds him with a gentle touch, cocooning him within it’s warm embrace.

His eyes close. His breathing slows.

His heart begins to grow fainter as he falls away from the reality he knows.

He can feel himself falling to the ice. The figure is close, now, reappearing.

This is why it disappeared, then. It knows he is close to letting go. It has been waiting for this day to come, for two long years.

He speeds towards it, seeing his captain. Seeing the men he admired so, with their smiling faces and relaxed laughter.

He has forgotten who he is. As he places his hand within the ice’s figure, he remembers.

With sudden clarity, he steps into the figure, wincing at the blinding light that surrounds him.

Once the brightness clears, he sees where he is.

He is in the captain’s quarters.

The captain knocks the table he sits at in an invitation.

And, with warmth coursing through his body, he takes a seat at the table.

  
  
  


The house is cold and silent. The drawing room’s fire is nothing but embers. Faint light from the lamps outside on the street falls through the windows, curtains remaining undrawn.

Everything is still. If one were to look hard enough, they could notice something different in the room.

Something lies to the right of the fireplace, a mass that remains unmoving.

Icy blue eyes, once holding warmth and hospitality, now remain open and unblinking. They stare past the physical world, into a realm that cannot be touched by human hands.

Thomas Jopson lays still.

Tear tracks still damp across his skin.

Blood still warm on his hands.

He is gone.

_We are gone._

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!!!  
> feel free to follow my twitter, under the same username, for more dumbassery <3


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